Elections were held for all the seats of the new Parliament provided for in the 1991 Constitution.

Background and outcome of elections:

Following the adoption of a new Constitution in July 1991, the election date was set for 29 September before being postponed after heated parliamentary debate during August on a new Electoral Law.

As the previous (June 1990) multiparty elections, for a Constituent Assembly, the ruling (former Communist) Bulgarian Socialist Party (BSP) was mainly confronted by the coalition Union of Democratic Forces (UDF), led by Mr. Filip Dimitrov, which, like much of the opposition, had become fragmented in the months preceding the poll. Altogether 38 parties and coalitions contested the National Assembly’s 240 seats. The BSP had allied itself with several minor parties, including the nationalist Fatherland Party of Labour.

Polling day was marked by simultaneous voting for local officials. According to final results, the centre-right UDF narrowly defeated the Socialists, led by Mr. Alexander Lilov, winning 111 seats to the latter’s 105 - neither thus gaining an absolute majority. The Movement for Rights and Freedoms, representing Bulgaria’s ethnic Turkish minority, was the third party to win parliamentary representation as no other group achieved the required 4% threshold.

In this context, President of the Republic Zhelyu Zhelyev asked Mr. Dimitrov to become the next Prime Minister, replacing Mr. Dimitar Popov, an independent, who had headed a BSP-UDF coalition Government since December 1990. On November 8, Parliament approved the new Council of Ministers, comprising UDF members and independents. The same day, the Prime Minister announced that the new Government’s priorities would be economic stability, battling inflation and unemployment, and braking the fall of industrial production. He observed that this was dependent on accelerated privatisation of state property, foreign investment, and amendment of laws on land ownership. Finally, Mr. Dimitrov called for the restitution of property confiscated by the former Communist régime.